Sunny Leone Biography

Now that Bigg Boss 5 made Sunny Leone famous in India, she'll be starring — and possibly performing a nude scene — in Jism 2.

Apart from her newfound reality TV fame, she's an award-winning Indo-Canadian nude model/adult film star best known for her work withPenthouse and Vivid Entertainment. She’s also an occasional player in the non-porn world, popping up in the 2010 film The Virginity Hit and the Indian reality series Bigg Boss.

Sunny Leone has a beautiful, natural look that sets her apart from the bubblegum-blond XXX pack. She's hugely popular in India, while also offering an alternative to her adult-entertainment contemporaries in North America.

Her strong business sense has led to great success through a personal website and a production company that gives her appeal beyond just the surface. But fundamentally, she’s just incredibly beautiful and frequently nearly naked, which kind of trumps all when it comes to sex appeal.

Barely (pun intended) two years into her modeling career, Sunny Leone scored herself a "Penthouse Pet Of The Month" title in 2001. Photoshoots for magazines like Cheri, Swank and Club International followed, and in 2003, Sunny was earned the "Penthouse Pet Of The Year" title. The lovingly leering men of Penthouse quickly put her into motion with the video Penthouse Pets In Paradise, and, like opening a can of Pringles, once you get started, there’s no going back.

Sunny Leone quickly signed a three-year contract with Vivid Entertainment and turned into a one-woman porno empire, cranking out toys, sex guides and even Apple’s first sanctioned porn-star iPhone app (which was subsequently removed… sigh). She’s currently moving beyond the adult world with appearances in mainstream TV and film, but fans of her sexy oeuvre needn’t worry about her abandoning the sex industry just yet.

Having established herself as a force within the adult industry, Sunny decided to head back to school and begin taking courses in nursing (a field in which she hopes to eventually find a career). Sunny has no plans to abandon her work as a model/actress, however, and she starred in her own adult film in 2005, appropriately named Sunny.

From 2003 to 2005, Sunny worked with adult film production company Vivid Entertainment, appearing in films such as Sunny Loves Cher, It's Sunny In Brazil and The Sunny Experiment.

In 2007, Sunny Leone starred in her first adult film opposite a man, in this case, her fiance, Matt Erickson. In 2008, she launched her own company, Sunlust Pictures. In 2009, Sunlust released The Dark Side of The Sun.

In September 2009, Sunny released the first iPhone app featuring a porn star, but it only lasted a few months in the Apple Store before being removed.

In November of 2011, Sunny Leone joined the cast of the Indian reality TV show Bigg Boss. Her presence on the show generated huge buzz in India, where viewers became aware of her career as an adult film star while her costars in the Bigg Boss house remained oblivious. Sunny Leone rapidly became the most-Googled name in India, and an overnight sensation.

Hot off the heels of her breakthrough into Indian pop culture via Bigg Boss, Sunny Leone was offered a role in Jism 2, a Bollywood film directed by Pooja Bhatt. The film marks Sunny's mainstream film debut, and she has been shooting on location around India — Delhi, Mumbai and Goa — for the past few months.

Via Twitter, Sunny has kept her followers updated on everything from her Hindi lessons to her brief trips home to Los Angeles to visit family and friends. It was reported on the Jism 2 site that Sunny refused to shoot an elaborate dance scene in the sand dunes outside of Jaipur because she felt the heat would make her sick. Apparently director Pooja Bhatt was "at her wit's end." But regardless of whatever complications have occurred on set, Sunny's career is moving ahead like a freight train. She's appeared in a condom commercial for Manforce condoms, and given the lucrative nature of appearing in ads, more are sure to follow.

Biography

Sunny Leone was born in Sarnia, Ontario on May 13, 1981 to a family of recent Indian immigrants. She enjoyed a carefree childhood that in no way foreshadowed a future in adult film. A healthy dose of religious repression through a Sikh household and a Catholic school education ensured something would snap eventually, but her youth was fairly uneventful on the bad behavior front — at least in terms of the public record. In her late teens, Sunny’s family moved to California, which inadvertently put her next to the porn capital of the world.

Although it wasn’t exactly a smooth transition from Canada to California, Sunny was determined to make the best out of her new situation. To that end, Sunny enrolled in a local junior college after graduating from high school in 1999.

It was during one fateful English class that a fellow classmate mentioned that she should give modeling a try, and even provided Sunny with an agent’s phone number. That call led to an appointment with a photographer, and it was at that initial session that Sunny got her first taste of on-camera nudity. Initially reluctant, Sunny realized that posing nude could lead to a lucrative career in the business and allow her to travel all over the world.